Virtual and/or physical computing machines that are running applications can undergo times of stress. For example, a machine may be stressed when it has a large volume of network requests being serviced, when it has a large amount of its processing or memory capacity being used at a particular time or for an extended period of time, when a large number of requests (e.g., write requests or read requests) are queued at a particular time or for an extended period of time, etc. During those times of stress, the machines' performance can be positively or negatively affected by one or more configuration settings (e.g., registry keys, file versions, number of network cards, etc.). Identifying those settings that can have a positive or negative effect on a machine's performance under stress has generally been done with a trial-and-error approach.
Some systems facilitate collection of information from computer systems and applications. Such systems can provide and report information that may assist in identifying issues with product design or code.